MARTINO: There is a doubt that Lionel Messi will make his MLS debut on Saturday

Inter Miami is in New York to prepare for Saturday’s game against the New York Red Bulls, which is the team’s seventh game in just 23 days.

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“We will do more evaluations after this evening’s practice,” Martino said. “It’s inevitable that we won’t get it at some point.”

The 36-year-old Messi has played every minute of Miami’s past six matches and looked tired at times in Wednesday’s US Open Cup semi-final match against FC Cincinnati, which lasted a maximum of 120 minutes. Messi had two assists and converted the opening kick in the shootout win.

The team flew straight to New York from Ohio, and had a recovery session at the hotel after arriving Thursday. She will have light practice on Friday at the Red Bull Arena.

“It will happen at least three times this year, and next year more,” Martino said regarding Messi’s potential resting, either for a full match or part of a match. “We’ll have to find a solution.”

It will not be easy to come up with this solution, as the veteran coach has relied heavily on Messi since his arrival. The World Cup winner has exceeded all expectations with 10 goals and three assists in eight matches.

And with Miami bottom of Major League Soccer – 14 points off last place in the playoffs – Martino certainly knows he’ll need to use Messi as much as possible the rest of the way.

The former Mexico and Barcelona coach insisted on Friday that he would not be distracted by outside noise over the implications of his star player’s bench.

Messi’s obsession has led to the cheapest tickets for Saturday’s game at the 25,000-capacity Red Bull Arena across the Hudson River in Harrison, New Jersey, with tickets currently fetching more than $400 on secondary resale sites. Moreover, on Friday afternoon hundreds of fans camped out outside the team hotel, hoping to see their football hero.

“I understand the expectations that the rest of the world has to watch, and that’s undeniable,” Martino said. “But I can’t act on it, because then I would risk making mistakes.”

Doing the wrong things in this situation would mean pressing Messi too much and risking injury to the star player, which could derail any postseason chance.

One of the things that helps Martino is that his team is a lot deeper in midfield before this match than they have been in the previous weeks.

Veteran Jean Motta is back in good health after the Brazilian was sidelined for nearly four months with a knee injury, and the two young new talents from South America Diego Gomez and Facundo Farias are becoming more integrated into the squad thanks to a good period of training among all the players. These games.

However, things will not get any easier after this weekend. Looming on the horizon is a meeting with Nashville in Miami on Wednesday, in a rematch of the League Cup final, which Miami won away from home last Sunday, on penalties.

And four days later, on September 3, the team will be on the road again in Los Angeles, which is second in the Western Conference.